Bidding to create the ultimate photo record

A team of imaging experts, scientists and historians will set out for the Titanic on Friday to collect the most detailed images ever taken of the wreck.

The BBC had exclusive access to expedition members in the US city of Providence, Rhode Island, as they prepared to leave port.

They will use cutting-edge technology to scan every corner of the famous ship to gather more information about the sinking.

This will be the first commercial flight to the Titanic since last year. OceanGate tragedyFive men died while trying to visit the missing ship in a new submarine.

A joint memorial service will be held at sea in the coming days for them and the 1,500 passengers and crew who went down with the Titanic in 1912.

The new expedition is being carried out by a US company that holds exclusive salvage rights and has so far brought up some 5,500 artifacts from the wreck.

But this latest visit was purely a reconnaissance mission, according to RMS Titanic Inc, based in Atlanta, Georgia.

Two robotic vehicles will dive to the ocean floor to take millions of high-resolution photos and create 3D models of all the debris.

“We wanted to see the wreck with unprecedented clarity and precision,” explained David Gallo, co-leader of the expedition.

The logistics ship Dino Chouest will serve as a base for operations in the North Atlantic.

If the weather is favorable, the ship will remain on the wreck at a depth of 3,800m (12,500ft) underwater for 20 days.

This will be an emotional few weeks for all involved.

One of the five people who died on the OceanGate submarine was Frenchman Paul-Henri (“PH”) Nargeolet. He was the director of research at RMS Titanic Inc and was to lead the expedition.

A memorial plaque will be placed at the bottom of the sea in his honor.

“It’s hard, but the important thing about exploration is having an urge and a drive to keep going. And we do it because of the passion that PH has for constant exploration,” explains friend and historian Rory Golden, who will be “spiritual director” on Dino Chouest.

There are few people on Earth who do not know the story of the supposedly unsinkable Titanic and how it was struck by an iceberg, off the east coast of Canada, on the night of April 15, 1912.

There are countless books, movies and documentaries about this event.

But although the shipwreck site has been the subject of repeated study since its discovery in 1985, there is still no map that can be considered an official one.

While the bow and stern of the ship are well understood, large areas around the wreckage have only been briefly examined.

Two six-ton ​​remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) are intended to fix that. One will be equipped with an array of ultra-high-resolution optical cameras and a special lighting system; the other will carry a sensor package that includes a lidar (laser) scanner.

Together they will move back and forth across a section of seabed measuring 1.3km x 0.97km.

Evan Kovacs, who is in charge of the imaging program, said his camera system had to have a resolution down to the millimeter.

“If all the weather gods, the computer gods, the ROV gods, the camera gods – if all those gods were on the same page, we would be able to capture the Titanic and the wreck site almost perfectly digitally. You would literally be able to count the grains of sand,” he told BBC News.

There was a lot of anticipation about what the magnetometer on board the ROV sensor could produce. This was a first for Titanic.

This device will detect all metals at the shipwreck site, even materials buried in sediments that are invisible to the naked eye.

“It would be a dream come true to be able to determine what happened to the bow of the Titanic on the seabed,” explains geophysical engineer Alison Proctor.

“Hopefully we can deduce whether the bow was crushed when it hit the seabed, or whether it actually extended all the way down to the intact sediment layer.”

The team wanted to examine the condition of some of the famous objects in the wreckage, such as the steamer’s boilers that spilled out when the luxury liner broke in two.

There is also a hope of finding items that are said to have been seen on previous visits. These include an electric candlestick, which was a fascinating curiosity at the time, as well as the possibility of a second Steinway grand piano.

The wood surrounding the instrument may have long since rotted away, but the cast iron plate or frame that held the strings is still there, and possibly even some of the frets.

“For me, the passengers’ belongings, especially their handbags, are of the most interest,” said Tomasina Ray, who manages the Titanic collection held by the company.

“It is their belongings – if we can find more in the future – that will help clarify their stories. For many passengers, they were just names on a list, and this is a way to keep them meaningful.”

This will be RMS Titanic Inc’s ninth visit to the wreck site. The company has courted controversy in recent years over its desire to bring back a piece of Marconi radio equipment that transmitted a distress signal on the night the ship sank.

That won’t happen on this expedition, but if and when it does, it will mean retrieving an object from inside the disintegrating ship.

For many, the Titanic is the burial place of the 1,500 people who died that night in 1912 and should not be touched, especially the inside of the ship.

“We understand and embrace that,” said company researcher James Penca.

“We dived to the Titanic to learn as much as we could about it; and as you should with any archaeological site, we did so with the utmost respect. But to leave it alone, to let its passengers and crew disappear from history – that would be the greatest tragedy.”

Additional reporting by Rebecca Morelle and Kevin Church